Mystery, Intrigue, and a Little Bit of Dog Slobber
by Olympian-Goddess
Summary: The Doctor has been sent on an errand for the Shadow Proclamation, you know, before he all declared war and whatnot. No Rose, no Martha, no Amy, no Rory. Completely different and oh so scrumptious! I can't tell you a lot now, but I promise your face will be exploding with the epicicity of my ideas. I know mine already has... several times. Oh, just read it! ;D Things will happen!


**Disclaimer: I do not own this lovely, lovely idea, but if you feel you must repay the majesty I have bestowed upon please feel free to send me cash, jewelry, boyfriends… anything, really…**

**Chapter 1: What the **_**hell**_** just happened?**

The night was lonely. The kind of night you would feel a sort of sadness on without knowing why. It was mostly warm with a cool breeze wafting through the streets of a small town.

At the ungodly hour of two in the morning a small whirring sound echoed throughout the buildings. It was quiet at first, rising to a crescendo, and then dissolving until the night was silent once more.

The Doctor had arrived.

On the corner of a block covered in grass, trees, and various jungle gyms, sat a large, blue, wooden box. It didn't seem much out of place, and the machine was holding the façade of a police call box.

The door opened and out stepped a man who had exited that box a million times and would exit it a million more. He walked with a step that was more than just carefree, but held decades of sorrow and grief. It was the walk of a man who had lost what meant most to him. But still he plodded on, as if nothing could be better than a small jaunt around the town.

But the Doctor wasn't here for leisure, he was on an errand. This was no Christmas Cruise. He picked up the pace and turned a corner, his trench coat flapping behind like an afterthought of intrigue.

Across the street, a light clicked on. Something had awoken Gwendolyn Jane Hawthorne. She sat up from her bed as if in a trance. As if guided by something, she walked to her window, looked out, and spied a curious-looking Police Box standing on the corner, as if it had been there all of her life. But it hadn't, and she knew that.

Her curiosity stole the better of her and she changed out of her pajamas, grabbed a flashlight and headed downstairs.

* * *

The Doctor was puzzled. The TARDIS had never parked this far away from where he was going. But, then again, this wasn't his usual scenario. He probably wouldn't have been there if he hadn't gotten a summoning from the Shadow Proclamation. They had sent him here to deal with a problem considered below their jurisdiction.

The summoning had happened while he had been visiting the new-found Moon of Poosh. But no one considered it "new-found" besides him and few others for previous reasons. ***wink wink***

He had visited the Moon around the Earth Year 2013. Poosh's moon was desolate and harsh, but the landscape was very beautiful to the Time Lord's eyes. When the Proclamation called to him he had to remind himself that they still considered him an ally, because they had not experienced their "disagreement" yet.

The Proclamation had asked him to hunt down a rogue Shifter-hound that had escaped their compound. Nothing too serious, but Shifter hounds were a rather vicious species if provoked.

No one knows what the original shape of a shifter-hound is, because they contain the ability to change into the shape of any sentient species by acquiring a small sample of DNA, merely by touching or other methods. They are called hounds because they prefer to use the bodies of four-legged beasts.

This Shifter-hound had escaped the Proclamation's compound and had managed to teleport himself to Earth, making a mess of several testing labs held in the Proclamation's base in the process. The Doctor was more than skeptical of the supposed intelligence of the beast, but he had encountered stranger happenings.

The Doctor had been told the hound would be located in a small town at the Southern tip of Ireland called, Tramore.

As he walked down street after street, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned the area, eventually leading him to an old abandoned warehouse located halfway across town.

"Of course…" he mumbled to himself, "I don't suppose it could have invaded a Starbucks or something." The Doctor squared his shoulders and entered the desolate, creaking building.

* * *

Gwen slipped through her front door. She knew what she was doing, but she could do nothing to stop it. It was as if she were possessed, but not entirely. She felt as if some part of her was aching to investigate the mysterious box, so the more cautious aspect of her personality sat back and watched as she navigated the halls of her silent, dark house.

Gwen closed her front door with extreme care, and, safely outside, trotted across the street. Each step she took towards the box seemed to excite her pulse and the rest of the world faded away. She could smell it. The smell was strange and familiar all at the same time, yet she couldn't place it.

Gwen stood three feet away, just staring. Her eyes glazed over and the flashlight dropped ominously to the ground. She didn't hear it. She was transfixed by the sight of the doors to the police box. They were opening.

Within three chirps of a cricket, Gwen was inside and the doors were shutting behind her with an almost noiseless click.

* * *

Inside of the warehouse, the Doctor found it extremely hard to see. But, he lit no lights to provide the same disadvantage to his prey. The air was damp and he could smell the beginnings of a serious mold problem growing from one of the corners of the room. A quick search with his screwdriver told him that the visiting alien lay in the basement area.

The Doctor neared a descending staircase and stopped to check behind him as a weird unrecognizable feeling enveloped him, sending a shiver down his spine. Decades of experience had trained him to trust feelings like that, but seeing as he could do nothing about it at the moment, he shook himself and made his way down the steps.

He cautiously reached the edge of the last step and peered into the darkness, searching for the beast with his ears, and nose instead of eyes. He found nothing.

Stepping away from the stairs, he heard a noise behind him and yanked his body sideways into the dirt to protect himself from the attacker. Several moments later, after a sigh of relief and thorough dusting off, he discovered that the offending noise was just a rat clawing its way into the back wall.

Deciding that the hound had taken residence in the only offshoot of the basement, the Doctor crossed to the boiler room, quickly tiring of the silly suspense that had built up from the moment he had exited the TARDIS.

The Doctor threw open the door, immediately regretting his misdirected enthusiasm.

The creature seated in the room jumped at the noise and spun to face his adversary, dropping to the ground a half-chewed rat similar to the one that had surprised the Doctor earlier.

The Doctor was baffled at its appearance. It looked so… innocent. The hound had taken the form of an Earthen Husky. Big, warm green eyes stared up at the Doctor, seemingly begging for a good scratching behind the ears, or a belly rub, perhaps a nice place to curl up and snooze for a while.

Both of the Doctor's hearts melted.

He gently crouched down and beckoned the shifter towards him. It hesitantly took steps toward the strange-smelling figure. As it haltingly advanced, the Doctor recognized the hound as a male.

"Come on, boy," he whistled and urged the hound even more. The Husky was almost where the Doctor could touch him with his outstretched hand.

* * *

Gwen was no longer in control. An invisible force willed her body into the strange box. On the inside, she was panicking. What was happening to her?! She could make neither heads nor tails of the strong sensations that filled her and blocked her from controlling her physical movement. On the outside, her possessed body was calm, serene, almost happy, even.

Gwen stalked toward a large panel covered with buttons and switches, and deftly flicked a small green button near the base of the board.

"Activation set. Name request." An electronic woman's voice echoed from invisible speakers throughout the room.

Gwen's voice rang out of its own accord. "Erase daughter from memory bank of Thomas and Mae Hawthorne.

* * *

The hound sniffed at the Doctor's hand tentatively, and took another step forward.

"Almost there, come on," goaded the Doctor amiably, not wanting to scare the potentially dangerous animal.

Suddenly, his sonic screwdriver lit up and beeped frantically. There was not time for the Doctor to even cuss. In that second, the dog had gone from docile to hostile. **(Haha, that kind of rhymed almost! ;)** The Doctor leapt back as the hound bared its teeth and growled menacingly. Slowly the Doctor reached for his screwdriver, attempting to stop the noise, but as soon as the beast saw the strange instrument, he jumped at the Doctor, knocking him to the ground.

The screwdriver skittered across the room out of the Doctor's reach. He brought both hands up to fend off the hound and watched in horror as the dog sank it's fangs into the Doctor's left forearm.

**Alrighty then, how was that? Nice and epic for ya? **

**Um first Doctor Who Fanfic so tell me how good/bad/horrible/oh-my-god-my-eyes-are-bleeding I am. Unfortunately my grammar in this author input is much less spectacular than the samples in the story, but this is just how my mind talks… yeah… **

**So! ….just, yeah… whatever…**


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